"Hey SCO, Sue Me": What's Next?

The "Hey SCO, Sue Me" petition made a brief stir last week; what will happen to it? UPDATED: June 6, 2003.

Editor's Note: This article was updated
on June 6, 2003. The SCO petition tar file is up and ready for
downloading
here.

The "Hey SCO, Sue Me" petition made a brief stir on the
Internet with words that still echo:

To: SCO

I am a Linux user. I feel that SCO's tactics toward an
operating system of my choice are unjust, ill founded and bizarre.
I am willing to be sued because I am confident that SCO's tactics
toward Linux will fail. If I have published my email address as
part of this petition it is so SCO representatives can email me and
begin the process of serving me a court order.

The response was not something the author of the petition,
John Everitt, expected. With expectations of perhaps 10
signatories, he was amazed when thousands of Linux users signed it.
He probably wasn't the only one surprised by the outpouring of
support; many conservative voices within the Linux community
expressed discomfort with their fellow users opening themselves to
litigation. Yet the list of signatories grew. Had the petition not
been cut short, there's no telling how many signatures would be on
the list. The last time if was available when I checked, the
signatures numbered more than 4,000.

The last available public communication about the petition
itself was pretty explanatory:

Dear Signatories: I've sent this via public
forums rather than send thousands of emails.
http://www.petitiononline.com/scosueme/ The Caldera SCO sue me
petition is dead on May 24th. I've set a cut off point rather than
edit a list numbering up to projected tens of thousands. I can't
cope with the phenomenal response. It's amazing that one company
could generate so much bad feeling. When the list is shut I am
going to edit the petition and send it off to Caldera SCO.

What a response! I expected ten people to sign. Including
myself! The size of the list reflects the chutzpah of those signing
and how Caldera/SCO has managed to alienate the wider world. For
every one person that signed there were a hundred that wanted to,
but were worried by the American court system. It's shame, but
perfectly understandable.

This is a fight against IP pomposity and injustice. Your
vibrancy and energy will make a difference. But! Organisations such
as the Free Software Foundation *need* your support too. IBM can
look after itself.

'If you tolerate this then your children will be next'.
Something the Free Software Foundation realised when a lot of
future Linux users were in diapers (I was just out).

Through all of the bromides, fashion and technological
breakthroughs of Linux, the Free Software Foundation has remained
reliable. Those guys and girls were in the process of switching
from commercial Unix before Linux. They were doing what is
fashionable now before it was fashionable. So every time you type
gcc or emacs think not of Linux or BSD or OS-X; think of the man
hours the FSF have put into promoting and protecting such
software.

Some people talk of trenches. The FSF dug them.

How can you help them? Well the most obvious is cash. Not all
can afford a donation. But like free software that doesn't
matter:

Do what you can. The FSF is as good a way of fighting Caldera
SCO as [is] any petition. Although I do feel that our petition
showed a degree of verve, humour and irony that escapes a lot of
zealots.

The FSF is not the *only* worthy organisation. For instance,
SCO Sue Me was made possible by Petition Online, who rely on
charitable donations to maintain the service. I'm donating
£10. If you can afford it do it, even a dollar helps.

IBM and the FSF were in NO way involved with this petition
and did not endorse it. Neither were they asked or made explicitly
aware of the petition. My views may reflect yours but are by no
means representative of the wider community. You should see some of
the flames...

Thanks to you all. You are very brave.

- John

This message has since disappeared, as the cut off time has
passed, and even the petition itself has disappeared from public
view. A few e-mails with Everitt revealed how the list will be
used.

The petition will not lie dormant, that's a certainty.
Everitt has created an insecure Copyright Management System,
forcing SCO to agree to the GPL to extract the names. The document
itself--containing the actual names and e-mail addresses of the
signatories--will be licensed under the GNU Free Documentation
License. So any changes made to the document have to be
released.

The file itself requires two GPLed programs to operate: Ruby
and Gnu Privacy Guard. It's in beta right now, and the beta isn't
available for distribution because two separate versions would be
difficult to control. John permitted me to see the beta, and it's
real--it's happening. Of course, it was a beta, so it wasn't
perfect. But, it's being worked on with the same diligence that
caused signatories to flock to it in such numbers that it was
necessary to cut it off.

To use the list, SCO will have to acknowledge the GPL, which
may or may not make them a bit leery of using it.

As for the petition itself? Perhaps it's an interesting thing
from a legal perspective; I'm not qualified to discuss those
aspects. It wouldn't be responsible for any publication to tell its
readers to sign themselves up to be sued, and yet, thousands of
people have signed. If anything, the signers of the petition showed
that the Linux community is made up of not only users, but people
who consider themselves stake holders in the operating system of
their choice.

One is left to wonder whether a proprietary operating system
would get such support from its user community.

Taran Rampersad is a
freelance writer and multiplatform FOSS developer; he also is a
signer of the "Hey SCO, Sue Me" petition. He's presenting at the
FLOS Caribbean
conference and can be reached through
his web site.

To use the list, SCO will have to acknowledge the GPL, which may or may not make them a bit leery of using it.

No, no, no. You don't have to agree with the GPL to use a program (even the GPL itself acknowledges that). Only EULA's can (in theory) do that but they haven't even been proven in court. You only have to agree to the GPL when *distributing* programs.

I believe that the author has created a content management system, which is technically covered by the DMCA, therefore the GPL is copyright management information, ergo covered under the DMCA. Strange and peverse usage of the GPL 101.

He is making a program that will display a EULA saying "this is the GPL". It will then display the GPL and allow you to read it. If you agree that the GPL is a legal and valid license, in general, and click yes "I agree", then the program will run, otherwise it will terminate.

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